The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

In May 2011, Kristen’s parents had a bad experience with a Massachusetts-based moving company. So on their behalf she wrote a negative, one-star review of the incident on Yelp. Just the other day, 18 months after the review was posted, she received a letter demanding she remove the review by Nov. 21 or face a lawsuit for libel.

This obviously didn’t go over too well with Kristen or her husband Phil Buckley, an SEO professional who presumably knows a thing or two about how people try to game online reviews and search results.

For example, while there are only two unfiltered reviews on the company’s Yelp page — both of them one-star. But look at the filtered results shows 11 reviews — all four- or five-star ratings — that have been deleted completely by Yelp for violating content guidelines or terms of service.

A look at CitySearch found a handful of positive reviews for the site. But Phil looked at the other reviews written by these people and noted a trend — that many of them also seemed to have penned reviews for the same travel agency in Hawaii and/or sprinkler repair service in Anaheim, CA. It has to strike you as odd that there are a half dozen people who have not only used the same three companies in far-flung states, but who also posted positive reviews about those businesses on CitySearch.

But there are some people out there who have given good feedback to the moving company. In fact, Phil found that the movers posted positive customer surveys on their own blog — complete with full names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Since this info was being made public, Phil checked with a couple of the customers whose reviews were on the movers’ blog. Both of them denied giving permission to have their questionnaires made public.

After Phil posted all this information and linked it on the moving company’s site, the sales manager who penned the legal letter, contacted him by phone to say he didn’t really want to sue Kristen. He just had problems with the review.

Phil says he just wants the movers to never threaten to sue his wife or any other customer again over a negative review.